1And men of the elders of Israel came to me and sat down before me. 2And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 3“Man, these men have brought to mind their foul things, and the stumbling block of their crime they have set before them. Shall I respond in an oracle to them? 4Therefore, speak to them and say to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Every man of the house of Israel who brings to mind his foul things and puts before him the stumbling block of his crime and comes to the prophet, I the LORD will answer him as he comes with his many foul things, 5so as to catch the house of Israel in their thoughts, as they all have fallen back from Me with their foul things. 6Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Turn back, and turn away from your foul things, and turn your face away from all your abominations. 7For every man of the house of Israel and of the sojourner who sojourns in Israel who falls back from Me and brings to mind his foul things and puts the stumbling block of his crime before him and comes to the prophet to ask an oracle of him, I the LORD will answer him Myself. 8And I will set My face against that man and desolate him as a sign and a byword, and I will cut him off from the midst of My people, and you shall know that I am the LORD. 9And the prophet who will be enticed and will speak a word, it is I the LORD Who enticed that prophet, and I will reach out My hand against him and destroy him from the midst of My people. 10And they shall bear their punishment, he who seeks an oracle and the prophet, with like punishment. 11So that the house of Israel no longer stray from Me nor be defiled by all their transgressions, and they shall be My people, and as for Me, I will be their God, said the Master, the LORD.”
12And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 13“Man, when a land offends against Me, to commit betrayal, I will stretch out My hand against her and break her staff of bread and let loose against her famine and cut off from her man and beast. 14And these three men shall be within her, Noah, Daniel, and Job. They in their righteousness shall save their lives, said the Master, the LORD. 15Should I send vicious beasts through the land and they bereave her and she become a desolation with no passerby because of the beasts, 16these three men within her—by My life, said the Master, the LORD—shall surely save neither sons nor daughters. They alone shall be saved, and the land shall be a desolation. 17Or should I bring the sword against that land and say, The sword shall pass through the land and I will cut off from her man and beast, 18these three men within her—by My life, said the Master, the LORD—shall not save sons and daughters but they alone shall be saved. 19Or should I let loose pestilence against that land and pour My wrath on her in blood to cut off from within her man and beast, 20and Noah, Daniel, and Job are within her—by My life, said the Master, the LORD—they shall surely save neither son nor daughter. They in their righteousness shall save their lives. 21For thus said the Master, the LORD: How much more so when I have let loose against Jerusalem My four evil scourges, the sword and famine and vicious beasts and pestilence, to cut off from her man and beast. 22And, look, there shall be left in her a remnant that is brought out, sons and daughters. Here they are going out to you. And you shall see their way and their deeds and be consoled for the evil that I brought upon Jerusalem, all that I have brought upon her. 23And they shall console you when you see their way and their deeds, and you shall know that not for naught did I do all that I did against her,” said the Master, the LORD.
CHAPTER 14 NOTES
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1. came to me and sat down before me. The only reason they would come to the prophet would be to hear an oracle from him. This very expectation enrages Ezekiel because he is aware that while seeking instructions about the intentions of YHWH—hedging their bets, one might say—their thoughts are taken up with other gods.
3. their foul things, and the stumbling block of their crime. It is characteristic of Ezekiel’s polemic style that he often will not bring himself to refer to false gods as “gods” or “idols” but instead substitutes pejorative epithets—gilulim, “foul things,” a word that recalls the Hebrew term for “turds,” and “stumbling block of their crime.” (For this reason, translations that render gilulim as “idols” or “fetishes” dilute the force of the original.)
Shall I respond in an oracle to them? The verb darash is the technical term for inquiry of an oracle, which is precisely what the elders have come to do.
7. I the LORD will answer him Myself. The “answer” that God says He will deliver is not the communication of an oracle but withering punishment.
9. And the prophet who will be enticed and will speak a word, it is I the LORD Who enticed that prophet. The theology behind this statement is somewhat convoluted. The evident idea is that these false prophets have habitually been speaking “out of their own heart,” which surely suggests human initiative. Given that behavior, God will now proceed to “entice” (or “seduce”) such a prophet to continue pronouncing false prophecies so that he will be ripe for punishment.
11. they shall be My people, and as for Me, I will be their God. This recurring statement expresses Ezekiel’s expectation that after the national cleansing of terrible retribution, Israel’s wholeness will be restored.
14. Noah, Daniel, and Job. It is now clear to all scholars that here Daniel does not refer to the protagonist of the Book of Daniel. One should note that the consonantal text allows us to pronounce this name as Danʾel. In the Ugaritic Epic of Aqhat, there is a righteous judge named Danʾel. These three figures, then, are three legendary righteous men, none belonging to the people of Israel. Job’s presence among the three reflects the fact that a story about a righteous man named Job was current in the region well before the composition of the Book of Job. The non-Israelite identity of the three is in keeping with the generalizing force of the declaration, “when a land offends against Me,” which is to say, any land.
16. these three . . . shall surely save neither sons nor daughters. In Ezekiel’s implacable moral vision, God follows a more stringent standard of justice than he does in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. There, he agreed to save the cities of the plain if there were ten righteous men within them, and in the implemented destruction, Lot was able to save his two daughters. Here, only the three righteous men will survive, and their own children will perish.
21. How much more so. This formula for an a fortiori condition, ʾaf ki, is applied here because if any offending land is subject to the unremitting scourge of divine punishment, an offending Jerusalem, which was God’s chosen city, will all the more be punished.
22. there shall be left in her a remnant that is brought out, sons and daughters. This is the surprise turn of God’s compassion for Israel. By all rights, since the sons and daughters of all other lands would not be spared, we might expect that Jerusalem’s sons and daughters would perish. God, however, will not allow the covenanted people to be utterly destroyed, and so, after the terrible devastation, the sons and daughters survive to go out of the city and join the earlier exiles in Babylonia as the nucleus of national regeneration.
23. And they shall console you when you see their way and their deeds. Although many claim that ʿalilot, “deeds,” has a negative sense in Ezekiel, the present context invites the opposite inference: the exiles will be consoled when they see these sons and daughters behaving as Israelites should and thus bringing hope for the future. There may even be an intended contrast between the paganizing elders of the previous prophecy and the young exiles here.